The Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools (WAES), was established in 1998 as a coalition of parents, teachers, students and education officials responding to public school budget cuts eroding the quality of education across the state. Using research from IWF, WAES organizers traveled statewide to help citizens and education stakeholders understand how and why the state school funding system was failing to work in the best interest of students and communities.
By 2002, the coalition expanded and dedicated its mission to restructuring the entire school funding system in Wisconsin. Working with WAES members, national education experts and local research specialists, IWF developed a comprehensive critique of the current system and a model for a new and effective way to fund Wisconsin public schools. This study, Funding Our Future: An Adequacy Model for Wisconsin School Finance, indicated that the funding structure in Wisconsin was broken and a new system was needed. This new system, based on a national trend for school finance based on student needs was called a funding adequacy model. Since then, IWF and WAES have released several more reports on the school funding issue, testified before legislative committees, worked directly with legislators to review both the problems in the existing system and reforms that would improve education, and built statewide support for an overhaul of the current school finance structure.
WAES and IWF staff crisscross the state to educate communities about the Adequacy Funding Model and to build support for comprehensive school funding reform in Wisconsin. Meeting with school district officials and parents directly, WAES staff mobilizes stakeholders to advocate for reform and expand the WAES coalition.
WAES became its own 501(c)(3) organization in 2008 with Tom Beebe as Director.
To date, over 150 membership organizations have joined WAES to advocate for its five core principles:
1. More state aid to the K-12 system
2. A focus on students needs as the basis for
funding
3. Decreased reliance on the property tax
4. Local control and accountability
5. A commitment that all district benefit by
reform
Because of intensive organizing at the grassroots level, WAES has been successful in bringing Adequacy to the legislative table at a time when school-finance reform is an acknowledged priority. An intensive effort is now underway to present a plan for reform to state leaders with support from groups across the state for action in the 2009 budget.
Hundreds rally in Madison for school-funding reform Walk on Childside rally on June 16th, 2009
Several hundred people showed up in Madison,
Tuesday, to deliver a message to state government
loud and clear: Enough is enough. It’s time to
change Wisconsin’s school-funding system.
People from all over the state came together for the 10th anniversary of the Walk on the Child’s Side, an event first held in June of 1999 to draw attention to the effects of the way the state funds public education. At the time, walkers left Butternut and covered the 240 miles to Madison to build support for funding reform.
Between 300 and 400 school board members, parents, students, and educators walked from the University of Wisconsin Library Mall to the State Street entrance to the Capitol for a brief rally. The highlight of the noon event was the appearance by a handful of legislators that resulted in an ovation from the crowd.
» For more coverage of the Walk on the Child’s Side, click here
» See additional pictures of the Walk on the Child's Side
» Press release after the Walk
News coverage:
» Channel 27, WKOW-TV, Madison coverage
» WEAC website coverage
» Channel 3, WISC-TV, Madison
» Advocating on Madison Public Schools (AMPS)
» WisconsinEye coverage
» Wisconsin Public Radio